PCGS Will Display Finest Early Dollars Set at February Long Beach Expo

The Hesselgesser Flowing Hair and Bust Dollar Collection, the number one set of early United States silver dollars in the Professional Coin Grading Service’s Set RegistrySM, will be displayed during the Long Beach, California Coin, Stamp & Collectibles Expo, February 14 – 16, 2008.

“The collection is owned by California radiologist, Dr. Robert D. Hesselgesser, and it’s the finest collection of Flowing Hair and Bust variety dollars graded by PCGS using Bolender and Bowers-Borckardt reference numbers. He has added or upgraded about a dozen coins since he first registered this impressive set a year ago when the expanded PCGS variety attribution services were launched,” said BJ Searls, Manager of the PCGS Set Registry.

“The total number of possible varieties in the Registry is 118. The exhibit at the PCGS booth (#807) at the Long Beach Expo will showcase 107 of them, many among the finest known examples.”

Highlights of the exhibit include:

1794 B-1, BB-1, AU-58 Flowing Hair, 8th finest known

1795 B-9, BB-13, AU-53 with silver plug

1795 B-20, BB-16, VF-35 Flowing Hair, finest of three known

1795 B-7, BB-18, AU-58 silver plug

1795 B-1, BB-21, AU-53 silver plug

1798 B-1, BB-82, AU-58 Small Eagle, 13 stars

1798 B-32, BB-91, MS-61 Draped Bust, finest known

1800 B-16, BB-187, MS-63 Draped Bust

“The variety series for early U.S. dollars is difficult to obtain in grades of Extremely Fine or higher. The Hesselgesser Collection has 84 in About Uncirculated grade and 83 of them qualify as condition census according to the Bowers-Borckardt silver dollar book,” said Ron Guth, PCGS President.

Dr. Hesselgesser became interested in coins at the age of ten. He started collecting early U.S. silver dollars in May 2005, and today has one of the finest and most complete sets ever assembled. It is ranked as the top set by variety in the PCGS Set Registry.

PCGS attributes early U.S. silver dollars, 1794 to 1804, by both Bolender (B) and Bowers-Borckardt (BB) reference numbers. In 1950 Milford H. Bolender published The United States Silver Dollars from 1794 to 1803, a reference book based on his own specialized collection of Bust dollars. He described and illustrated each variety known to him at the time and assigned (B) numbers to each coin. The book was extensively revised by noted collector, Jules Reiver, in 1998.

A second reference book, Silver Dollars & Trade Dollars of the United States: A Complete Encyclopedia, Vol. One, authored in 1993 by Q. David Bowers and Mark Borckardt, corrected and updated the Bolender book.

Each known variety was assigned a (BB) number.

PCGS President Guth will present an illustrated, educational seminar, “History of Coin Grading,” at the Long Beach Expo on Thursday, February 14, at 2 p.m. in Room 104-C.